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Programmatic media buying refers to ads bought through automated technology, as opposed to traditional negotiations and deals. This encompasses numerous digital channels nowadays since social or search buys can be automated. However, programmatic advertising in media buying often refers only to tactics such as digital display, video, audio, etc., separate from other channels such as search or social. The way in which programmatic ads are purchased, the types of ad placements available, and the targeting capabilities are what sets this channel apart from others and is the reason that programmatic ad spend increases year over year.* With programmatic buys, advertisers purchase ads on a Demand Side Platform (DSP) where real-time bidding takes place. The DSP works with ad exchanges and networks that host the auctions between advertisers. From there, publishers provide available ad spaces on the Supply Side Platform (SSP) and ultimately ad auctions are won and ads get served. Programmatic ad placements include display banners, native, video, audio, CTV and more, and these ads can appear on any website that is auctioning off ad space either mixed within their content, or on the site space around the content. This means there is expansive inventory and diverse creative opportunities that can be bought on a single platform. Audience targeting capabilities with programmatic are significantly more robust than other biddable media platforms. Typically, advertisers have options to target based on platform online behavior, interests, lookalike technology and first party data. What sets programmatic targeting apart from social is the access to third party audiences and deals from a variety of companies. Programmatic Concerns Given the nature of programmatic advertising’s expansive web inventory, brand safety is the first concern. It is imperative to utilize the built-in platform settings to ensure ads are served alongside brand-safe content. It is also recommended to utilize third party verification companies to track brand safety, fraud and viewability. With cookie deprecation looming, third party data will become less reliable since it will be harder to track user behavior across websites. This is why predictive audiences, contextual audiences and first party data is now more important than ever. LeadLab’s Programmatic Expertise Can Help Guide You Through Programmatic Implementation & Management  The LeadLab team boasts programmatic experts that can help walk you through a customized programmatic strategy, including ad servers connections, campaign structure, recommended audience targets, as well as budget allocation.

Getting Prepared for the Transition As Google prepares to sunset Universal Analytics (UA), it is important that you and your clients are prepared for the transition to Google Analytics 4 (GA4). In this post we cover an overview of the key differences between UA and GA4, as well as necessary action items to prepare for the transition. What’s Out: Universal Analytics Universal Analytics was built for a period of online measurement centered around desktop web usage and data gathered from cookies. As desires for privacy increase, and cookies phase out, a need for a new kind of measurement has emerged. UA uses a session-based measurement model which collects a group of user interactions (hits) with a website over a certain timeframe as one session. Universal Analytics sessions can include multiple pageviews, events and transactions. In UA, most reporting relies heavily on device ID and when the User-ID feature is enabled, its data reports separately and does not integrate with other identity spaces. Because these identity spaces work separately, it is difficult to measure user journeys across devices. Bounce Rate: A percentage of single page sessions in which there was no interaction with the page. A bounced session has a duration of 0 seconds. According to GA, Bounce Rate was a reasonable measure of site engagement at one time, but has become less useful as websites and apps have changed. What’s in: Google Analytics 4 Every Hit is an Event: GA4 uses a more flexible event-based measurement model in which all user interactions are stored as events. GA4 events can collect and send pieces of information that better specify the actions a user takes and can include things like purchase value, page visits and user demographics. Increased Privacy: Google Analytics 4 does not rely exclusively on cookies and will no longer store IP addresses, as users have come to expect more privacy and control over their data. 4 Event Categories: Automatically Collected Events, Enhanced Measurement Events, Recommended Events, Custom Events Identity Spaces: In GA4, data is processed using all available identity spaces (User ID, Google signals and device ID). Once a user is matched, analytics creates a single user journey from all data associated with this identity. Bounce Rate will no longer be an available metric as GA4 transitions to the use of the new “Engagement”metrics to measure page performance. Engaged Sessions: The number of sessions that lasted longer than 10 seconds, had a conversion event, or had at least 2 pageviews or screenviews. Avg. Engagement Time per Session: The amount of time the user is actually engaging with the page (scrolling, etc) while the page is the primary window being viewed on the screen. Engagement Rate: The percentage of engaged sessions relative to total sessions. According to GA, this metric is more relevant to how websites and apps work today. Reports: GA4 has significantly fewer standard reports compared to Universal Analytics and is designed to encourage the use of custom reports. In GA4 there are only 3 standard acquisition reports available with a key difference being the removal of the Source/Medium report as a standard view. However, it is fairly simple to update these reports to include your desired dimensions and create custom reports by modifying these existing GA4 reports. You can create custom reports in GA4 using the Explorations feature.

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The Many Benefits of Remote Work After spending years in the traditional corporate world, our CEO, Sara Johnson, realized that office life isn’t for everyone and there are benefits to operating differently. Instead of having a headquartered brick-and-mortar location, Sara chose to build LeadLab Media in a remote space, enabling employees to work in an environment that they genuinely enjoy and can be productive in. The environment at LeadLab Media is highly collaborative, and fully remote, with flexible work schedules and strong employee benefits. Our remote team has complete autonomy to decide where they will work from. Employees can customize their workspace according to their needs and can create their own office designed solely for them. This being said, coworking office space is always an option for our employees based on what each individual feels is best for their productivity and working structure. Being a remote company also doesn’t limit us to where we get our talent from. Our co-workers can reside anywhere in the world and still be an asset to our team. We don’t need to all be in an office to stay organized or operate as a unified team. Since we work in the digital industry, we can collaborate and connect in a virtual space while using platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Slack. Offering flexibility to employees helps improve work-life balance and encourages high productivity. This work-life balance has provided flexibility for our working moms to work while still operating as a full-time parent. Our Operations Manager, Jenna Bonazinca loves the time she’s spent as a working mom at LeadLab Media for the past four years. People want to do well for a company that cares about their well-being and personal life. It is statistically proven that people also perform at their best when they are happy and satisfied. In research conducted from a LinkedIn study, 90% of employees are happier working remotely than under the supervision of their employers at the office. Keeping our team satisfied, inspired, and happy helps increase engagement and creative ideas from our team, which helps move our clients forward. LeadLab Media can help your team succeed through our dedicated service and entrepreneurial culture. Want to find out how? Request a consultation today !

Which is Right for You?  Google has two main ad buying platforms: Google Ads and DV360. Both platforms are widely used by advertisers due to their access to Google inventory and seamless integration with other Google Marketing Products (GMP) such as Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Campaign Manager 360. Most advertisers use these two platforms for different types of media buys, with Google Ads being used mainly for search and Google property buys, and DV360 used for programmatic display or video buys across the web. However, there are multiple ad types that can be bought on both platforms and knowing the differences can help align your campaign goals and budget.

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Here's What You Need to Know Netflix has finally succumbed to the pressure of paid advertising. After years of publicly stating that commercials would never be seen on the platform, the global subscription streaming service confirmed that they would be introducing an ad-supported, lower-priced subscription tier this summer. According to Netflix executives, the timeline for when this new subscription tier hits the market is quicker than originally thought, as they are now aiming for the last three months of 2022. “Those who have followed Netflix know that I’ve been against the complexity of advertising and a big fan of the simplicity of subscription. But as much as I’m a fan of that, I’m a bigger fan of consumer choice,” said Netflix co-CEO, Reed Hastings. “And allowing consumers who like to have a lower price, and are advertising tolerant, to get what they want makes a lot of sense.” This change in business model was brought on by the announcement of their first-quarter earnings, which reported a loss of 200,000 subscribers, as well as an expected loss of an additional 2 million subscribers in the second quarter. Netflix’s share price has dropped significantly since the subscriber announcement, losing approximately $70 billion in the company’s market capitalization. With competition in the streaming market, inflation, pandemic disruption, and widespread password sharing, Netflix is facing serious challenges. Netflix will be partnering with Microsoft to lead its ad tech and sales, so all companies wanting to advertise on Netflix will have to do so through Microsoft’s platforms. Netflix wants to build its ad service on a global scale and Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service can provide the technology needed for such a large-scale service implementation. Competitors such as Disney+ and HBO Max have in-house capabilities that Netflix doesn’t since both of these platforms already have TV channels and streamers that show ads. Since Netflix is late to the advertising game, the service will likely be making less money selling ads until it builds up its own sales/tech infrastructure and does not have to outsource the technology from Microsoft. Netflix has expressed interest in building out its advertising infrastructure externally. “Our intention is to roll it out, listen and learn, and iterate quickly to improve the offering,” states Netflix’s letter to shareholders. “Over time, our hope is to create a better-than-linear-TV advertisement model that’s more seamless and relevant for consumers, and more effective for our advertising partners. While it will take some time to grow our member base for the ad tier and the associated ad revenues, over the long run, we think advertising can enable substantial incremental membership (through lower prices) and profit growth (through ad revenues).” The streaming giant currently offers a variety of payment tiers including, basic, standard, and premium plans. These plans range from $9.99 to $19.99 and remain ad-free. With the introduction of the new ad-supported tier, these current plans are likely to increase in price. The cheaper price of the ad-supported tier is still being determined by Netflix and Microsoft, but it had been rumored to be between $7 to $9. In 2019, Hulu reported that 70% of their viewers are on their ad-supported plan, and disclosed making $2.1 billion in ad revenue in 2021. With Netflix currently ringing in at 220 million subscribers (quadruple the amount of Hulu subscribers), the streaming giant can expect a significant amount of their upcoming earnings to be from ad revenue. These numbers paired with the chance for lower cost ads while Netflix works out the initial advertising kinks of their subscription plan, means this is a great opportunity for businesses to reach an enormous base of TV streaming audiences. Other changes you can expect from Netflix include stricter password-sharing rules. Of its 221.6M subscribers, Netflix accounts are being shared with over 100M non-paying households. Netflix sees this as one of its biggest threats and plans to charge higher monthly prices to those who share their account with multiple people. “We’re in the early stages of working to monetize the 100m+ households that are currently enjoying, but not directly paying for, Netflix,” the letter to shareholders reads. “Our goal is to find an easy-to-use paid sharing offering that we believe works for our members and our business that we can roll out in 2023.” Disney+ is also set to launch its own ad-supported version of its platform later in the year, joining Peacock, Hulu, Paramount+, and HBO Max. With the majority of these platforms turning to this business model, one thing is certain, the future of streaming is in advertising. LeadLab Media values staying up to date on the current news and trends happening in today’s media landscape. If you are looking for a team of experts to keep you in the loop of all things performance marketing and paid media, schedule a free consultation with LeadLab Media today.

Work Smarter Not Harder Time is money and wasting your valuable time manually pulling data takes away from time you could be analyzing and optimizing your campaigns. LeadLab Media has saved our clients 30+ hours a month on reporting and improved team morale by building them automated reporting dashboards. We are a data-driven company and we are passionate about analyzing performance data to gather the “story” of our clients accounts. Let’s be honest, that is the fun part in the reporting process. It should take time and be thorough; but what shouldn’t take much time is pulling the data to analyze. See how two of our clients have benefitted from dashboard automation: Client A: Top Media Agency Worldwide and Part of a Major Holding Company When Client A came to us requesting a highly detailed quarterly report for each of their eight Google Ads accounts, we immediately presented the idea of automation to speed up the process. The client agreed this would be ideal for now and the future. The result was instead of spending days pulling all the data and developing charts, we constructed eight unique automated dashboards that did the heavy lifting for us. The new dashboards saved 4-6 hours of data pulling per account, allowing us to spend the extra time digging into the performance data, providing insights, and data-driven recommendations. Our dashboards are highly customizable, date ranges can be changed as you need and we were able to easily download the charts and graphs we needed into PowerPoint format. We were proud to deliver a high quality quarterly report and implement performance improvement opportunities for our client with the time we saved. Client B: Full-Service Media Planning & Buying Agency, Supporting Regional & National Adv Client B came to us with big data issues. They struggled with inaccurate data and significant frustration amongst their team who spent 30+ hours/month on reporting. Our team jumped into action and did a full overhaul of their dashboards, giving them confidence in their data once again and valuable time back. Of course, you’re wondering how much time did it really save them? Our dashboard report cut their teams monthly reporting down to just 30 minutes/month! Their team can now focus on projects and tasks that matter and that move the needle for their business. They even expressed to us the positive impact the new reports had on team morale. That’s a win-win! Work Smarter Not Harder Dashboard reporting can integrate into any major platform, with an API, and also can integrate custom data, like sales and CRM data, showing you real time accurate costs per customer. If you have any reporting challenges you’d like to solve, schedule a free discovery call and see how we can support you today.

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is now the official owner of Twitter. Musk completed the $44 billion purchase on October 27, 2022, and his first move will be to take the company private. Taking the company off of the stock exchange and owning it privately will set the stage for the variety of changes Musk mentioned he will make to the social media platform; from lifting common social media restrictions limiting free speech, to adding a subscription model for verified accounts, here’s what Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover means for advertisers. The greatest concern for advertisers is the changes Musk has planned concerning free speech on the platform. In Musk’s own words, “The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.” Musk will be reinstating some people that have been banned from Twitter in the past for hate speech or disinformation, and opening up the platform for people from all sides and angles to tweet their opinions.  Musk vaguely reassures advertisers by saying, “Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences.” And he does say he plans to have a “content moderation council” that will review and approve anyone in consideration for reinstatement on the platform. One top executive on his Twitter Council Board stated they felt that “it seemed like Musk was surrounding himself with few voices that would take advertiser concerns seriously.” However, what will actually transpire now that Musk is in charge is unknown. With so much uncertainty around brand safety, we are recommending our clients move their ad budget to other platforms that offer clear brand safety guidelines and are in line with industry standards. The potential transition to a subscription model could also have an impact on the digital advertising industry. A subscription model would allow users to pay to use the platform and see fewer ads, or potentially no ads. Will advertising be kicked to the curb in this new model? Advertising accounts for a bulk of Twitter’s revenue, at $2.18 billion in the first half of 2022, showing an 11.8% increase from the previous year. With that said, it is unlikely advertising will be eliminated from the platform altogether but there is still a big question mark around how advertising might change with the new revenue model. As the brand safety plan is established and the functionality between advertising and the subscription model becomes clearer, it will be important for anyone running Twitter ads to create a contingency plan. Once brand safety is addressed and if advertisements are still a staple of the platform, we recommend a test to shift a percentage of funds back to Twitter advertising to gain learnings on how Musk’s Twitter takeover impacts performance. We expect there will be changes to demographic targeting that can pose a challenge for marketers but are not dissimilar to the limitations we faced with the iOS 14 update. For ourselves and all of our clients, we put a big emphasis on the importance of testing, analyzing the results, and determining the best path forward, and we will approach the new Twitter environment in this way before cutting it off completely. An important mention of the Twitter buyout is that Musk will be merging it with X Holdings, another established company of his, tied to his desire to launch a new app “X” which he hopes will be “the app for everything.” The goal of this app is to mirror the WeChat app that has taken over the Chinese market by becoming an essential tool for day-to-day life; it incorporates messaging, social media, payments, food orders, and more. It is not clear how Twitter plays into the idea of the “X” app but is, nevertheless, something to consider. If Twitter moves in the direction of becoming a “super app”, similar to WeChat, it will offer a new environment for advertisers to test that doesn’t yet exist in the United States. This is a developing situation that advertising agencies need to stay on top of to ensure clients’ brand safety is top of mind and that media dollars are being used efficiently and effectively. LeadLab Media will continue to monitor the transition of Twitter and provide the latest updates and advertiser recommendations. Follow along on our social media pages to get the newest information and be prepared for any changes that are to come. Key Takeaways: LeadLab Media recommends shifting advertising dollars from Twitter to other platforms while the brand safety concerns are still prevalent. We recommend for advertisers to stay up to date with any Twitter-related news in order to understand what brand safety standards get put into place and if returning advertising dollars to Twitter will be an effective and brand-safe move. As brand safety guidelines are established, we recommend putting a percentage of budget towards Twitter advertising in order to test the updated Twitter-sphere.